According to CNN News, city health officials in Shanghai have ordered an Ikea to close after a close contact with a coronavirus case was found at the store. A video taken inside the store showed a chaotic scene as desperate shoppers scrambled through an exit, trying to avoid being trapped inside. IKEA Xuhui in Shanghai wanted to ban entry and exit to cooperate with epidemiological investigations, scaring customers to leave quickly. Don’t go shopping in China until the virus is gone, remember. pic.twitter.com/dAWbpbln7v — Fang Zhouzi (@fangshimin) August 14, 2022 Story continues below ad Another video showed half a dozen uniformed men trying to hold doors closed, before a group behind the doors forced them open and run past the guards. Yesterday, a case of abnormal health code occurred in an IKEA in Shanghai and the whole mall was suddenly blocked 🥶 Some people were forced to flee for fear of being sent to concentration camps, but in reality there is nowhere to escape under #AmazingChina’s digital surveillance pic.twitter.com/MWpbTOJ3kz — Donna Wong💛🖤 (@DonnaWongHK) August 14, 2022 The deputy director of the Shanghai Health Commission, Zhao Dandan, told BBC News that the sudden closure was ordered after close contact with a child who tested positive for COVID-19 who visited the store. The commission said close contacts will be made in “two-day closed-loop management and five-day health monitoring” at the store in the city’s Xuhui district, according to Shanghai’s epidemic prevention and control regulations. A “closed-loop” system often requires affected individuals to work, eat, and sleep at that location or in a nearby quarantine facility, such as a hotel. Story continues below ad
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It was not reported how many people were ultimately unable to leave the Ikea store on Saturday. The Shanghai Daily reported on Sunday that nearly 400 close contacts of the six-year-old boy had been traced, and an additional 80,000 people had been ordered to undergo PCR testing as a result of the contact tracing. The strict lockdown remains a contentious issue in Shanghai. Widespread anger erupted earlier this year among many of the city’s 25 million residents when the government imposed a two-month city-wide lockdown. 2:00 China’s ‘zero-COVID’ policy sparks tension as Shanghai remains on lockdown China’s ‘zero-COVID’ policy sparks tension as Shanghai remains on lockdown – April 17, 2022 China has a rigid zero-covid-19 policy, which relies on mass testing and extensive quarantines to stamp out potential outbreaks as they occur. Story continues below ad In May, World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that as the virus continues to evolve to become more contagious, China’s policy of zero COVID-19 is not a viable long-term solution.
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“When we talk about the zero-covid-19 strategy, we don’t think it’s sustainable given the behavior of the virus now and what we expect in the future,” he said at the time, according to Bloomberg. To date, China — a country with a population of more than 1.4 billion — has recorded fewer than one million cases of COVID, according to Our World in Data. 2:30 “I feel at peace”: Shanghai’s COVID-19 lockdown ends after 2 months Previous Video Next Video © 2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
